Editor's Letter

Loose Ends

Peter Flax reflects on what it takes to make a ride flawless.

peter flax

(Photo by Chris Hinkle)

This is easy. That’s what I thought as we flew up the California coast near Monterey, with crashing waves and a purple swath of ice plants to our left and the wind at our backs. We were going about 25 but the spinning was effortless. Part of it was the bike—I was riding a badass, black-on-black Specialized Venge outfitted with the new SRAM Red group and Zipp 303 carbon clinchers. Part of it was my company—I was being towed by two friends (and BICYCLING contributors), Selene Yeager and Mike Yozell, both of whom can chat amiably and pedal with restraint and disassemble someone like me in a few hours. Which is just what I expected to happen during the 50-mile fondo at the Sea Otter Classic.

But there’s no point dwelling on the inevitable tragedy of the final scene during the romance of the second act. The conversation and the three-lane bike path meandered pleasantly. I had two dependable wheels to sit on. As we ripped out of town, I pondered how the Venge was a perfect fit for the moment, how the rigid speedster with quiet shifting and a raucous freehub would forever be woven into the memory of this excursion as much as the barking sea lions.

Forty-five minutes later, not long before my check-engine light illuminated, I began cataloging recent rides with a similar synergy—where the bicycle, the route, the company, and the intangibles had added up to something flawless. There was that frigid four-and-a-half-hour winter ramble on a BH Prisma, a ride that would have been a death march on a bike that wasn’t so steady and comfortable and full of character. I recalled pedaling up Tucson’s Mount Lemmon with the BICYCLING test team on a Focus Izalco Pro 3.0, specifically the smooth, confident feeling of rising out of the saddle and pushing that bike, and myself, as hard as I could. There was that day I came home from a bike race and jumped on a Public D1 to get frozen yogurt with my kids; the journey was fun and sweet and dignified. I cannot forget the Pinarello Dogma 2 that I dove into lines I normally wouldn’t contemplate as I corkscrewed down 5,000 feet of vertical on a 15-mile descent in the Italian Prealps.

Eventually, the topography interrupted my musings. We turned inland toward the finish at Laguna Seca and the day’s only significant climb. Suddenly it was very warm. Mike was describing how he had made matzah on a pizza stone and Selene mentioned that she was doing a ’cross race in the afternoon, and while I was digesting all of this (along with a pomegranate gel), a gap opened up. I made a little effort to close that gap, and another that appeared two minutes later. Mike and Selene kept chatting and spinning, oblivious that my legs felt roughly like wood-fired matzah. My bad-ass Venge could not save me from myself. The third act was beginning. Within minutes, my friends looked like little figurines up the road.

Still, the last 3 miles of climbing were not bad after all. I got out of the saddle and gave it a go. The air was hot and the pavement was perfectly nubby and the pistachio green hills stretched into the distance. All in all, it was a highly satisfying tragedy.